Brent Olson

Why photography? It is a way for me to see the world better. To pay attention to it. To force myself to look again at the things I thought I had understood. And it is a chance for me to playfully see the world; to find adventure and share it. Adventure revolves around friendship, exploring the world, overcoming a degree of difficulty, and developing stories to tell.

Just before he died in 1996, the geographer JB Jackson wrote an essay entitled “The Places we Play.” In it, he described a particular kind of sport:

"A generation ago, in an essay entitled “Games of Dizziness and Fear,” the French psychologist Jean Caseneuve wrote: “There is a kind of game or sport which can be designated by the term helix, the Greek word for whirlwind or an evolving spiral, to which is related a word which can be translated as vertigo or the dizziness of intoxication.” How can dizziness be experienced as a sport? “By an effect both physical and psychological. The organs of balance, particu- larly in the inner ear, are momentarily disturbed by unusual movements and the result is a modification of the way we perceive our surround- ings. Our relation to the world around us takes on a strange quality, and our self-awareness undergoes change. Even in harmless cases, as on a swing or merry-go-round, there is a certain shift in perception that is part of the pleasure children get from this kind of play. The definition of helix games and sports should include all activities involving . . . loss of physical balance and all the means we use to modify our self-perception.” Caseneuve noted that in those sports the spatial dimension is not always well defined, but that the dimension of time remains precise; for only by consciously controlling the length of time we undergo this experience can we continue to maintain our freedom; the sport is still a game, still a kind of make-believe."

My photography hopes to capture that playful engagement with the world around us.